GAME BYTES: Publishers don’t need white knights

Wednesday

Jun 25, 2014 at 6:00 PMJun 25, 2014 at 6:58 PM

Humongous corporations that make things they want you to buy do not actually care about you. Maybe it seems obvious when I say it like that, and yet so often we don’t act like we agree. But it’s true, and they certainly don’t need you coming to their aid in the wilds of the Internet.And that goes doubly for the major video game publishers, who it would be more accurate to say actively resent consumers for not kowtowing to their every whim. This is the world we’ve created.

By Phil OwenSpecial to Tusk

Humongous corporations that make things they want you to buy do not actually care about you. Maybe it seems obvious when I say it like that, and yet so often we don’t act like we agree. But it’s true, and they certainly don’t need you coming to their aid in the wilds of the Internet.And that goes doubly for the major video game publishers, who it would be more accurate to say actively resent consumers for not kowtowing to their every whim. This is the world we’ve created.Yeah, I’m a little bit bemused about this subject right now after a reader sent a long essay in response to a piece I wrote about “Dragon Age: Inquisition” at E3, in which I discussed how Bioware and EA seem to be selling it as a generic fantasy RPG. This person raced to the game’s defense in a truly comical and long-winded way, reciting press releases and quotes from developer diaries in an attempt to counter my annoyance at BioWare’s repeated use of popular buzz terms and phrases that had been thrown out ad nauseum to describe any number of different games at E3 the week before last.The refrain in this unintentionally hilarious rebuke was we just need to give them a chance! Good Guy BioWare is making a great game and we should let it do its thing! I joked to a friend that this sounded like a job application cover letter to me, because it really was that sycophantic. All in the name of a company that probably resents everybody for not buying 30 million copies of every game it puts out.Though I’ve spent several hours before writing this, laughing about this weird response essay, it does underline a big problem we have in our relationships with the large companies that make the stuff we buy to entertain ourselves. A lot of folks are weirdly loyal to these faceless and inhuman conglomerates that are focus-testing everything to be as generic as possible. That’s why we have such rampant franchise exploitation in all media, and it’s why games, in particular, seem to just be the same five things released over and over again every few weeks. Because that’s literally what the folks sucking up to those corporations are asking for. That’s a tendency that has built a world that is quite uncomfortable to most people, and most gamers. In 2013 the average money spent on video games was a little more than $60, which is the price of a single title from a major publisher. Just one. Maybe people would buy more of them if there were more than one of them, eh? I’m a funny guy.But the problem is that when folks question that sameness, others come to the rescue of the poor, plucky megacorporation with 8,000 employees in 20-something offices around the world. Because they’re the victims here.The result of that shoutdown culture over the years is that the publishers assumed the shouters were the majority and thus the ones they should be serving. That’s not the case, though, and that’s finally becoming clear to some industry folks. But that realization probably won’t come to EA fast enough to save this “Dragon Age” game. n